1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a computer, and more particularly, to a computer capable of automatic bandwidth configuration according to a type of an I/O expansion card.
2. Description of Related Art
In the interior of a known computer platform, the central processing unit (CPU) and various hardware components are typically interconnected by a bus to transmit data therebetween. Following continuous advancing of hardware design, various high speed bus design concepts have been continuously developed to meet the need of high speed transmission of huge quantity of data.
Various interface cards have been used to expand functions of the computer platform. By plugging the interface cards into I/O expansion slots of the computer, the interface cards can provide the computer user with desired services. However, the number of the I/O expansion slots of the computer platform is often limited by the space and cost. An I/O expansion card is used to provide a plurality of interface card slots for accepting multiple interface cards and thus serves the purpose of increasing the I/O expansion slots number. When multiple interface cards are plugged into the interface card slots of the I/O expansion card and therefore coupled to the I/O expansion slot through the I/O expansion card, the bandwidth of the I/O expansion slot is shared by the multiple interface cards.
FIG. 1 illustrates a PCI-Express interface bus architecture for a computer in which a chipset CS1 provides multiple I/O expansion slots Slot0˜Slot2. In the existing design, the bandwidth configurations of the I/O expansion slots Slot0˜Slot2 are determined based on input signals of configuration setting pins of the chipset CS1. Therefore, the bandwidth configurations of the I/O expansion slots Slot0˜Slot2 are fixed, and the bandwidth configurations of the multiple interface card slots of the I/O expansion cards are also fixed. However, it is impossible to know the bandwidth configurations of the I/O expansion cards in advance.